Edward Elgar fell out of fash­ion after World War I, and his exis­tence was bare­ly acknowl­edged by music his­to­ri­ans for the next fifty years. He was so firm­ly asso­ci­ated with British Impe­ri­al­ism, that his music became the sub­ject of sneers. This is par­tic­u­larly sad, because Elgar him­self was a gen­tle, sen­si­tive soul whose pri­mary inspi­ra­tion was nature, and he grew to loathe every per­for­mance of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry”, the bom­bas­tic anthem that had been made from one of his march­es. In the 1890’s he had been a very patri­otic Empire boost­er, along with every­one else. But he was bit­terly dis­ilu­sioned by World War I and sought solace in his beloved Eng­lish coun­try­side. He nev­er much cared for his role as Britain’s Offi­cial Composer.

But despite all the scorn heaped on him, the First Sym­phony, the Cel­lo Con­certo, and the Enig­ma Vari­a­tions con­tin­ued to be per­formed in seri­ous con­certs, while the Pomp and Cir­cum­stance March­es lived on in the Pop Clas­sics reper­toire. The Sec­ond Sym­phony, not at first suc­cess­ful, slow­ly came to be played as often as the first. At his death, he left sketch­es for a third sym­phony, and in 1998, these were trans­formed into a com­plete work by the respect­ed com­poser Antho­ny Payne. Read more »

Grun­truck was a short-lived, but impor­tant band in the Grunge scene that brewed in Seat­tle in the ear­ly nineties. Ben McMil­lan and Scott McCul­lum, both pre­vi­ously from Skin Yard, Tom­my Niemey­er from The Accused, and Tim Paul, from Napalm Beach formed the line­up at the time of their great­est impact. I have a tape of their sec­ond album, Push (1993), but I would bet­ter rec­om­mend the first, Inside Yours (1990), which I’ve only heard scraps of, but which sound­ed bet­ter to my ear. Their sound, in the sec­ond Album, at least, is very sim­i­lar to Alice In Chains.

Born Los­er is a five-song tape giv­en to me by the lead singer, Derek Madi­son, back in 1992. Not great pro­duc­tion qual­ity, but the ener­getic thrash still holds up well to a jad­ed ear. Derek obvi­ously had some stay­ing pow­er, because Grasshop­per still exists, six­teen years lat­er, under the name Grasshop­per Sound­Clash, Their MySpac.e page offers four songs to down­load, with a more melod­ic sound. “Mag­netic Super Blue” is catchy, and could eas­ily find a broad audience.

I’ve long been fond of this 1993 album by Swervedriv­er, a potent alter­na­tive rock band from Oxford. I have the Cana­dian release on cas­sette tape, which has an addi­tional song, “Nev­er Lose That Feeling/Never Learn”, not avail­able on the U.K. orig­i­nal. Swervedriv­er was an excel­lent band, absorb­ing influ­ences at first from raw bands like Iggy and the Stooges, and slow­ly acquir­ing a denser “alter­na­tive” tex­ture with­out los­ing any aggres­sive­ness. Unlike Dinosaur Jr., Son­ic Youth, My Bloody Valen­tine, and oth­er bands of that gen­eral zeit­geist, Swervedriv­er nev­er found a sat­is­fac­tory rela­tion­ship with a record com­pany, or a broad audi­ence. But Mez­cal Head stands up very well after twen­ty years. “Duel”, the only song to get a video and sig­nif­i­cant air­play, is by no means the only good track on the album. I pre­fer “Last Train To Satans­ville” and the jazz-like “Nev­er Learn”. The vocals are more or less impos­si­ble to make out, and float over the thick instru­men­tal sound like a ping pong ball on a tsuna­mi, but that was par for the course at the time.